The US celebrated the end of a ‘long national nightmare’ as it turned 200. What about now?

A decade in the making, the 1976 bicentennial had a cathartic impact on the wounded national polity

• Americans: how do you feel about the country’s future after 250 years of independence?

It felt like a proper jamboree – a coming together of diverse peoples who thought they had something to celebrate. But the defining moment of the 1976 bicentennial, the US’s last epic birthday celebration, came two years before.

“My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over,” Gerald Ford declared in his presidential inauguration speech of 9 August 1974. “Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men.”